The Clinical Pharmacology and Trials Team is responsible for the study of the preclinical and clinical pharmacology of new anticancer agents developed in the Cancer Research UK Centre for Cancer Therapeutics and for their early clinical trials. Such investigations may include the study of mechanisms of action and resistance, toxicology, pharmacokinetics, early dose-finding studies and the development of pharmacodynamic biomarkers for the measurement of drug action in tumour and surrogate tissues. These may be molecular assays or functional imaging studies. The emphasis is increasingly on hypothesis-testing clinical trials of agents acting on new molecular targets including cell signalling, cell survival, the cell cycle control machinery, chromatin modulation and angiogenesis.

The Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics (DMPK) Group (led by Dr Florence Raynaud), within the Clinical Pharmacology and Trials Team, is a multidisciplinary group studying the pharmacokinetics of agents in clinical trials, such as 17AAG, 17DMAG and abiraterone. It is also leading the development of PI3K inhibitors. In addition, this group is evaluating the preclinical DMPK of novel chemicals under development in the Centre. Early assessment of DMPK allows liabilities to be identified and the early implementation of strategies to optimise drug-like properties.

Aims

• Clinical development of new discoveries within the Cancer Research UK Centre for Cancer Therapeutics:
  • Develop novel agents for cancer treatment.
  • Develop non-invasive imaging techniques for evaluation of pharmacodynamic effects of anticancer agents in tumours.
• Develop and apply new pharmacodynamic techniques, such as gene expression arrays, changes in circulating tumour cells, in the content of early clinical trials.